Finding voiceover actors using Voice123

As the world’s first voiceover marketplace, we’ve been around since 2004 which means that we’ve helped thousands of buyers find voiceover actors. Recently, we interviewed our most seasoned voice talents to hear their experience with Voice123. We heard from various actors about what works for them, the challenges they face and how they overcome these difficulties. But our talents are only half of the success of Voice123. The other half? Our buyers. Without voice seekers posting projects, the site would just be a directory, but we wouldn’t be making work fulfilling for people around the world.

For this blog post, we hit the phones again and this time called up our buyers to see what made them come to Voice123, what challenges they face, how they work around them and what keeps them around. We spoke with production companies, ad agencies and documentary film producers from around the world to give you a glimpse into the other side of the industry – the folks behind the scenes who work tirelessly to cast, develop and produce engaging media and the folks who hire voiceover artists to make their projects come to life. The interviews that follow have been edited for clarity.

How Buyers Find Us

First things first, how do voice seekers find Voice123? Marketers spend big budgets trying to get the word out about their ideas, products and platforms but time and time again, word of mouth marketing has proven to be the cheapest, most reliable and most efficient way to drive revenues and increase margins. Voice123 is no different in this domain, but our word of mouth success comes from both voice talents and buyers.

Don Veinish, Partner at Joe Audio, found us through a recommendation. He told us, “a voice actor that I worked with in person suggested it to me. We were talking about your competitor, and he told me why he liked Voice123 better, and I quickly came around to the same opinion.”

Other buyers start working at companies that have used Voice123 to find voice actors for years and thus adopt us during their onboarding. Such was the case with Kathy Pinter, Senior Copywriter at Walz Tetrick Advertising, who told us, “my boss had been using your services for about three years before I started so when I got into Walz Tetrick I started using it as well.” Other buyers hear about us from industry networks and colleagues who use our platform and love it so much that they recommend it highly.

Another way that buyers find us is through online searches. On average, 35% of our site traffic comes from online searches – this shows that Voice123 is a leader in finding voiceover talents and auditions.

Why buyers choose Voice123

The reasons that voice seekers like Voice123 are as diverse as the buyers themselves! One of our biggest advantages is that finding voice talents is free on Voice123. We make our bread and butter from subscription fees from our actors, so we offer our platform for free for buyers. That means no transaction fees, commission fees or escrow fees. We don’t charge these fees as part of our commitment to providing an open marketplace that aims to eliminate the middleman in the voiceover industry. We simply connect voice talents with buyers and then let them conduct their business independently without getting involved.

Buyers also like us because we’re fast! Posting a project takes less than 5 minutes, and it’s easy to do with our post project form. Under tight deadlines, buyers can post a project on Voice123 and start receiving auditions in as little as 15 minutes. They can also search for the perfect voice in our voice talent database and send a message asking the voice actor to participate in an audition or hire them directly. With Voice123, it’s easy to find the perfect voice for your project.

What kinds of projects buyers post

With 14 different categories to choose from, buyers use Voice123 to cast all sorts of projects. From voices to on-camera appearances, voice seekers know they can trust Voice123 to find high-quality talents from around the world. Mathew Choat, Senior Producer at Space City Productions has been with Voice123 for five years. He uses Voice123 to find voices for TV commercials. Similarly, Kathy uses our platform to find talents for television and radio commercials as well as advertising for a variety of clients. We’ve seen folks post projects for so many uses and purposes – from a husband who’s looking for someone to record a sexy message for his wife’s birthday to announcers for events, voiceovers for movie trailers, and characters for cartoons, animations, and video games. It’s surprising how varied the industry is and how important a professional voiceover is to the success of any venture.

The kinds of projects buyers cast using Voice123 also range in skill level. We have lots of students who use Voice123 talent to give a professional voice to their thesis and capstone projects. Usually, student projects are lower budget, and so they look for talents who have a lower skill level who want the experience or who audition because they believe in helping out a student. On the other end of the spectrum, we have big buyers who look to cast voiceover professionals with lots of experience in the industry and who offer the best voices at the highest quality and with professional turn-around times. And we have everything in the middle: small businesses looking for a voice for their on-hold phone messages, medium-sized production companies that provide clients with completed videos or recordings for small to mid-sized campaigns. During one of our phone calls to buyers, we spoke with a documentary film producer who produced Hudson River School: Artistic Pioneers for PBS. They used Voice123 to find the narrator for the documentary as well as different actors for character readings.

Why buyers stick with us

Mathew told us how he used to do auditions before Voice123, “previously we had voice over agents that we used to give a brief to and they’d recommend some artists to us.” Voice123 has made a big difference in how Mathew casts his projects: “with Voice123 I can get people to audition and hear them reading the script and I find useful sharing that with our clients so they can hear exactly what someone’s going to sound like before we choose to hire them.” Kathy also likes that Voice123 is quick and easy to use. “The website is set up nicely, so I’m able to track all the voices that I’ve listened to. I’m able to send a link to clients without them seeing all the details and they can hear the voice and decide if they like it.” She told us, “I used to go to studios and sit through auditions and sit through edit sessions and I don’t have the freedom to do that. We have to move at a much faster pace, so it’s great to be able to get the auditions done while I’m doing other work and [voice actors] record it while I’m doing other work and then we send it off to an editor who also works while I’m working on something else so we can get a lot done. This is much faster.”

Don told us that he likes that auditions are quick and use the actual script but also that he “can get people who are the right people and [he’s] not restricted by geography.” He told us, “there was one job that I need someone with an English accent, and I got someone from England. I have a much deeper talent pool to draw from. I can record anyone and direct them and have the files minutes after they record themselves.” Joe Pistorio, commercial and long-form film and video producer, also likes the global reach of our platform. He said, “I was relieved that I could find quality talent around the world in different languages and most of whom could speak enough English to have an understanding of what was need. I was impressed with the reach of Voice123.”

Of course, another reason why buyers like Voice123 after they use it is the quality of our talents. We bring in the best voiceover talents from around the world, who record high-quality audio in a range of affordable prices. One of our buyers told us, “The response is great. Whenever I list anything on Voice123, I immediately get 10-15-20 auditions, and I’ve always been able to find a voice over artist for whatever I needed for my show.” Our talents are professionals who offer excellent service, as confirmed by Don. “There are times when I’ll get 100+ auditions, and I’ll listen to every one of them and when it’s not with Voice123, 70 of them are terrible. With Voice123, the level of quality is way higher and more consistent. I can count on the auditions being good on Voice123, even if I restrict the number I receive.”

We were happy to hear Don say, “One of the things that I like is that you’re not agents, and I can negotiate directly with and deal with directly and be invoiced by the talent themselves, which makes the whole thing easier. I find that I have really good access. It’s a great platform for meeting and discovering talent.” Another buyer also mentioned that being able to deal with actors directly was a big relief when it came to union obligations. They said, “I can get great people, and I can work with them without having to get involved in becoming a signatory. Now I can just negotiate my own deals with people and not have to deal with the bureaucracy of the unions. It’s refreshing.” There’s another benefit to dealing with talents directly. As Kathy told us, “A lot of times we will go back to the same people if the client was happy.”

Our buyers also keep coming back thanks to our excellent customer service. We’re proud to offer support to our buyers via chat, email and telephone to ensure our buyers have a positive experience on our site. When we asked our interviewees what kinds of challenges they faced on the platform, one didn’t hesitate to say, “Whenever I had a question, [customer service] got back to me the same day or the next day. I’ve had many great experiences with the site. I’ve had no challenges really with Voice123.” Joe said, “[customer service] is very responsive. I send a ticket in and it usually gets taken care of in an hour or two.” Don said, “I compare it to the main competitor and there’s something about the people skills and the company’s philosophy that’s better on your end.”

Finally, our buyers report that they like Voice123 because it’s free. We make our revenues from talents which means that buyers can use Voice123 completely free!

Here are some other things our buyers said about us

“I’ve always been able to fulfill my project. Even when we’ve been searching for quite small countries in Europe, and we were looking for people who spoke those languages natively. Even then we were able to find people through Voice123.”

Mathew Choat

“I’m able to get a variety of voice talents, and I don’t think I’ve ever had to go back and ask for additional voices. I usually find something I’m really happy with, and I’ve always had a great experience with talents being responsive, getting back to me quickly, and taking direction. If there are minor changes, they’re willing to go back and make those changes. It’s quick and easy.”

Kathy Pinter

“I’ve gotten great results. I’m working on part two of the documentary and Voice123 will be my first stop when it comes to finding voice over actors.”

Documentary film producer

“It seems to me that it’s the way the entire industry is going and the way it should go.”

Don Veinish

“The other attractive part of it for me was having the voice over artists be the ones who are the client. They’re paying to be part of the service, so I wasn’t paying for it. I didn’t want to pay and not know if I was gonna get what I needed.”

Joe Pistorio

It takes a lot to be successful, especially in industries as competitive as the voiceover industry and the technology industry. But we owe a lot of our success to our talents and our buyers for trusting us with their projects, their talents and often with their source of revenues. Our buyers come to us through many means including referrals, adoption when they get a new job and internet searches. They come to Voice123 for many reasons: commercials, presentations, audio books, video games, animations and more. The list is long and exhaustive. While there are challenges with our platform, as with anything dynamic online, there are lots of benefits that buyers have discovered. There’s the opportunity to connect with actors from all over the world, the ease of use and speed of auditions, the excellent customer support and best of all: this is all free for buyers. It certainly makes sense for voice seekers to use Voice123 to find the perfect voice for their project. What are you waiting for? Post your project today on Voice123.com/post